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Making the Most of Web 2.0 (Reboot): Read/Access

Yes, you can sometimes make the sites you surf on the web part of your research. This guide explains how.

Read/Access

Making the Most of Web 2.0 -- Read/Access

You want to read open web articles to:

  • Make sure you can understand them.
  • Make sure their content fits your subject.
  • Make sure there is enough content to make citing the piece worthwhile.

While reading library database articles sand ebooks is relatively straight forward, reading articles from the open web is not. The reason is paywalls. Below is an image of a paywall for an online journal called ArtForum International.

Hitting a paywall in a journal called ArtForum

Fortunately, you can use the library's resources to break through paywalls:

1) Copy or transcribe the article's title.

2) For magazine articles paste the title into the Big Discover box on the library web page. You can add AND and the author's last name if the title is a common phrase.

searching for an article titles on the library web page

3) For narrower results, add "quotes" at the beginning and end of the title. Then, run the search.

4) Then follow the links. Below is an image of a reference that leads to the article's full text.

Here is the paywalled article

For newspaper articles: 1) Scroll down to the Databases A-Z listSelect N for News and Newspapers.

Databases A-Z. Now select N

Here is News & Newspapers

2) Copy or transcribe your article's title.

3) Add "quotes" at the beginning and end. Run the search.

Note: not all content on magazine web sites finds its way to library databaes, and the New York Times takes twenty-four hours for items from its Opinion page to reach ProQuest News and Newspapers.